What is the least I can learn?

26 Jun, 2025

I am in recovery from a condition that I would call "knowledge FOMO".

What does this look like?

• Studying the French Revolution just so I can beat my girlfriend in Jeopardy
• Trying to resist but ultimately giving in to primo YouTube clickbait every time (my watch later list is currently sitting at 3143 videos)
• There was no sadder moment for me than the first time I looked at my bookshelf and admitted to myself "there are some books in here I will never, ever read"
• Taking 5x too long on projects because I need to know what everything means and how everything works

A recent example from motorcycle maintenance:
I couldn't just use the grease the manual suggested for the rear axel, I had to know what all types of grease exist, why this one is used for this application, how bad it would be to substitute a different one, what is really the difference between grease and lubricant, etc etc etc.

Now some might say to themselves reading that: "wow what a curious young man, how good it is to know the 'why' and not just blindly follow like sheep." I say that because I've heard that. I think its part of why I justified it for so long. It's useful and admirable to know things, right?

No, not right. Knowing things is only useful if we do something with it. In the motorcycle example, I ultimately used the dumb grease the manual suggested. I knew I would all along. It's cheap, easy to find, and it's pretty safe to assume the manual man knows his stuff.¹ Nowhere in this knowledge adventure was there any other motivation besides some vague internal sense of "gotta know it" and a visualization of the pride on my dad's face when he pop quizzes me out of nowhere on automobile grease and I get a 105.

So how do we learn responsibly? In a way that's actually useful?

Well, rather than knowledge being the goal, let it just be one of the tools available to you to reach your actual goals. I can think of about 100,000 goals I'd rather reach than proactively preparing myself for my dad's maintenance pop quizzes (this isn't something that actually happens idk where this idea came from my dad takes his motorcycle to the shop like a normal person), but if I'm not consciously thinking about them then these random urges can easily take precedence. If I am consciously thinking about them then I realize what I'm really missing out on and can redirect that FOMO in a more healthy direction. This is one of the main reasons explicit goals are essential and the effort towards setting them right is always worth it. A well set goal equips you with a "what should I learn" detector.

And for those of us who really struggle with the knowledge hunger, I suggest a slightly more extreme measure: Ask yourself "What is the least I can learn to accomplish this goal?"

This question forces us to confront the fact that learning is actually an obstacle to our goals. It's something that will use some of our finite human energy. It's like this common reminder in the software industry for people who get too in love with writing code for the sake of writing code: "Code is not an asset, it's a liability."

But this is good news! We don't have to learn any less than we used to. It's just that now we can reach way more fulfilling goals way more often while we're doing it! All it takes is a lil bit of good ole fashioned planning and discipline.